Sustainability & Risk/ Energy / Background Data - Accounting

Managing Background Data: Accounting

Using the Background Data task, the Business Process Owner for Accounting can define the following data used by the Energy application:

Define Cost Classes and Categories

You first create cost categories, and then create classes for the categories. For detailed information on entering this data, see Define Cost Category and Classes.

To define your cost classes and categories:

Step 1: Define Cost Classes

The Cost Classes table holds cost classes, which roll up cost categories to more general groupings.

The default schema includes a default set of cost classes; you may wish to use these as is, or modify them to fit your needs. To reinstate the default cost classes, run the Create Required Cost Classes and Cost Categories action.

Step 2: Define Cost Categories by Cost Class

After defining your cost classes, you can define categories for them.

When you document costs (income or expense items), you assign them a cost category, which tags the items with a cost type such as: BUILDING - MAINTENANCE, RENT - BASE RENT, TAX - PROPERTY TAX, TAX - SCHOOL TAX, or UTILITY - ELECTRIC.

The Costs, Scheduled Costs, Recurring Costs, and Budgets tables, and their associated actions, use cost categories for grouping and summarizing costs for cost analysis, budgeting, projections, and chargeback.

The Energy Cash Flow Report is pre-populated with a restriction to show Cost Categories that begin with “UTILITY”. In order for your utility bill cost data to appear in this report, you must have all utilities assigned to a Cost Category that begins with “UTILITY”.

Define Accounts

In addition to using the organizational hierarchy for accounting purposes, domains such as the Telecom, Lease, and Maintenance domains offer the Accounts table, which you can use as a cost center. This is convenient for charging work orders, work requests, energy bills, leases, and properties to specific accounts.

When defining accounts, you must complete the Account Code field to uniquely identify each account.

See Defining Accounts.

Define Vendors and their Accounts

Before defining vendors and their accounts, ensure that you have entered the sites and buildings that use those accounts. Once you have defined the location, then you define vendors. Finally, you define accounts for these vendors.

Step 1: Define Vendors

The first step in the billing process is to enter vendors into the system, if these have not already been added for another application. Vendors are also used in the Projects, Service Desk, Corrective Maintenance, and Preventive Maintenance applications. There are several ways to do so:

Step 2: Define Vendor Accounts

The second step in the billing process is to enter vendor accounts into the system. This is necessary so that bills are allocated to the correct vendor. Vendor accounts are different than accounts in that they contain address information for Billing, Service and Remit To, and are used when entering bills, and when entering bills for proration groups.

Note: When defining proration groups, all the buildings in the group must be associated with the same vendor account.

To add or edit a vendor account:

  1. Select Sustainability & Risk/ Energy / Background Data – Accounting / Define Vendor Accounts.

    The View and Edit Vendor Accounts form appears. All existing Vendor Accounts appear in the left pane.

  2. From the Vendors pane list, select the vendor for which you want to add an account.

    The  Vendor Accounts list shows any account already added for the selected vendor.

  3. From the top of the Vendor Accounts list, click Add New to add a new vendor account.

    The right pane shows the Vendor Account Codes section. The system enters the Vendor Code for the vendor you selected before clicking Add New.

  4. Enter the following required fields:

    Vendor Account Code. Enter the unique identifier for this vendor account.

    Bill Type: Select the type of utility bill from the Select Values list.

    Site Code / Building Code. Select the site and building for the energy bill.

  5. Enter additional information as needed, including the Billing, Service and Remit To address information.
  6. Click Save.

Next steps

Define Utility Rates. You can define utility rates so that you can to track bill lines by the type of rate the bill is based on.